Conventionally, commodities, such as home-use electronic and electric devices, produced and sold on a massive scale in the world have been disposed of on a massive scale. In order to decrease the effect on the environment of such massive disposal, the following measures (1) and (2) have been often taken.
(1) Select a place for disposing of a commodity according to the properties of the commodity. For example, a commodity which may be harmful to humans is landfilled in a place distant from a city, and a commodity which may not be harmful to humans is landfilled on the outskirts of a city.
(2) Change the form of a commodity into a form which may not have any effect on the environment, and then the commodity is disposed of. For example, flon, which is one of the causes in disruption of the ozone layer, is removed from the commodity, and then the commodity is disposed of.
However, these measures are merely ad hoc. Therefore, a fundamental measure for decreasing the effect on the environment of disposed commodities by reducing the amount of commodity disposal has been expected.
Reducing an amount of commodity disposal by recycling commodities is one typical example of such fundamental measures.
In 2001, the “Home Appliances Recycling Law” was enforced in order to reduce the amount of home-use electronic and electric devices (hereinafter, referred to as “home appliances”) disposal by encouraging the recycling of the home appliances. This law requires manufacturers of a particular types of home appliances to collect, dismantle, and rebuild the home appliances of that particular type.
Home appliances, which are currently distributed, require manual labor when they are dismantled into a plurality of parts, because most of the home appliances are not designed to accommodate automatic dismantling. This means that the dismantlement cost of home appliances is significantly higher than their manufacturing cost. As a result, the dismantlement cost of home appliances is added to their selling price. Thus, there is a possibility that consumers will have to pay more to purchase the home appliances.
The Applicant of the present application estimates that it will take at least a few to 10 years or more after the enforcement of the “Home Appliances Recycling Law” to entirely replace the home appliances currently distributed with home appliances which are designed so as to accommodate automatic dismantlement in a dismantling plant.
The objective of the present invention is to provide a recycling method which allows a decrease in an operation cost of the dismantling plant by reducing the amount of commodities (for example, home appliances) to be dismantled.
Another objective of the present invention is to provide a recycling method which implements a global recycling system for efficiently recycling commodities worldwide.